


This Isn't Good

by ThoseFiveChicks



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Vampire Slayer, Biting, Blood, Blood Drinking, Dubiously Consensual Blood Drinking, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Heavy Angst, M/M, References to Drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 06:03:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13652931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThoseFiveChicks/pseuds/ThoseFiveChicks
Summary: When a friendship gets fucked up this badly, you can be sure some other things are going to fall by the wayside.





	This Isn't Good

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt I got on tumblr, and I'd like to clarify that I was specifically asked for angst and can't be blamed for this!

Lance woke to the sound of a doorbell. Groggy and out of it, he didn’t move at first, just squinting up into the grey light of his apartment. It was evening, probably. He was practically impossible to wake during the day, so the sun had to have started to set for something as unobtrusive as a sound to rouse him.

The doorbell went off again.

Was it his? It could be one of his neighbors’. It would make sense, since his sleep-addled mind vaguely remembered that Pidge and Hunk were out of town right now. What was the name of that conference? Cosmos something? No one else would be visiting him.

Another ring of the doorbell.

Lance rolled over and buried his face in his pillow. Whoever’s door that was should answer it already so he could get back to sleep.

 _Ding-dong_.

Inconsiderate, that’s what this was.

 _Ding-dong, ding-dong_.

The Ringer, whoever they were, was picking up the pace, leaning on the doorbell so it sounded near-continuously, cutting itself off over and over again. God, would they get a  _hint?_  Either the person they were trying to summon was a rude ass or they weren’t  _home_ , either way they should stop making so much  _noise_.

 _Di-din-ding-di-ding-dong, ding-dong, di-di-din_ –

Lance growled, throwing off his covers and storming angrily towards his front door. He didn’t care that he was in his pajamas, whoever this Ringer was could  _deal_  with it for the two seconds it took for Lance to stick his head out his front door and chew them out for waking him. He was pissed enough that he didn’t even care about the bedhead he was no doubt sporting.

He threw the front door open, a poisonous barb on the tip of his tongue for whoever was making that noise, but he found himself awkwardly swallowing it when he found the Ringer closer than he’d thought they would be.

 _Much_  closer.

The poison of the aborted insult stung his throat as he realized two things. One, the doorbell had been his after all, and two, Keith Kogane was standing on his doorstep.

Glaring at him.

Lance hurried to marshal his features into an appropriate expression, suddenly very aware that he was in nothing but a pair of soft flannel pants and a  _The Snuggle Is Real_  t-shirt.  _God_ , his hair was probably a  _mess_ , and he hadn’t even washed his  _face_  yet. Keith had no right to be showing up when Lance couldn’t make him feel ugly by comparison.

Keith had no right to be showing up at all, come to think of it.  _How had he known where Lance lived now?_

Instead of asking that, or any of the other questions that flew through Lance’s mind in the half-second following opening the door, Lance’s first words were a statement of the obvious.

“It’s you.”

No, that wasn’t right, he said ‘It’s  _you_ ,’ with what he believed was an appropriate amount of disgust and irritation given that this was  _Keith_ , and also maybe some surprise and a tiny touch of fear because, well, the guy  _had_  stabbed him. Lance was still allowed to be pissed about that, among other things.

But Keith didn’t so much as pause to notice Lance’s hurriedly rearranged expression (still angry, but more put-together, more simmering hatred than righteous fury). He just pulled his hand back from the doorbell and jabbed a finger into Lance’s chest, the movement sharp enough that Lance took half a step back.

“ _What did you do_ ,” Keith growled, and no, that wasn’t fair,  _Lance_  was the one who should be angry here.

His voice climbed an octave. So much for put-together.

“What are you  _talking_  about? You’re the one who came barging up here trying to break my doorbell– how did you even find me? No, why are you even  _here?_  No,  _no_ , more importantly, I was  _asleep!_  What makes you think you have the right to just–”

Keith shoved him. Lance stumbled back a few more steps, more out of surprise than anything else. There was still disorientation clinging to his movements from being unexpectedly jostled from sleep, and it was that disorientation that gave Keith the opening to storm  _into his apartment_ , kicking the door shut behind himself and grabbing the front of Lance’s shirt in the same motion. He yanked, and Lance managed to keep himself mostly upright, Keith dragging  _himself_   _up_  to Lance’s height as much as he dragged Lance  _down_  to his. Lance’s breath caught. The air around him was suddenly flooded with the smell of wood smoke and molasses.

“What. Did you  _do_. To me,” Keith repeated, and that last little addition gave Lance pause.

 _Why should I answer any of your questions_ , rose to his mind.  _You just broke into my apartment!_

“I haven’t seen you in like a month,” Lance snapped, grabbing Keith’s wrists and trying to free himself from his grip. He was less than successful. “Whatever you  _think_  I did, I didn’t do it.”

“ _You_ –” Keith started. He broke off then, words dissolving into an angry sort of snarl, and when he let go of Lance’s shirt it was so sudden that Lance almost fell over backwards from the displacement of force. Keith took that moment to pull his wrists away, and before Lance could regain his balance he stepped around him and stalked deeper into his apartment.

Oh no. No, nope, not happening, Keith was  _not_  invading Lance’s personal sanctuary. The only humans allowed in here were Hunk and Pidge, and his family when they came to visit. The only scents he let inside his home were familiar and friendly ones, not the burnt sugar that was Keith’s stench.  _God_ , if he had to clean after this he’d be  _pissed_ – more pissed than he was now, anyway.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he asked, throwing his hands up in the air as he followed hot on Keith’s heels. Keith, for his part, didn’t answer, just swept into Lance’s living room like he owned the place and sat his ass down on his couch. He folded his arms, glaring at Lance like  _he_  was the home invader.

 _Lance was going to have to wash those cushions_.

“Out,” he snapped, pointing towards the door. “I don’t even care what you think you’re doing right now, just get  _out_.”

Keith was a black stain on his household, all dark hair, dark eyes and dark clothes. He was wearing his hunting jacket, Lance noticed, the leather one that didn’t get bloodstained.

His stomach rolled.

“I need to talk to you,” Keith said. He said it almost calmly. That made Lance want to throw something at him even  _more_.

“I don’t care!” he cried, then he did it again. “I don’t care!  _I don’t care!_  Get out of my apartment!”

“I’m not  _leaving_  until I  _talk to you_.”

“What part of  _get out of my apartment_  is not getting  _through_  to you?”

“Lance–”

“Don’t you  _Lance_  me you ass, you don’t get to  _Lance_  me after you punctured one of my lungs with your stupid–”

Keith raised his voice, not in anger this time, just in a fight to be heard over Lance’s pluming volume.

“It’s addictive, isn’t it?” he asked, and Lance stopped.

He looked at Keith. This time he looked carefully, and not through a haze of anger and disturbed sleep. Keith’s nails were digging into his jacket sleeve, and if Lance didn’t know firsthand how durable it was he’d say Keith was  _ruining_  the leather. His knee was bouncing, a tight  _up and down_  that Lance had written off as irritation, but that wasn’t right because Keith balled up like a fist when he was angry, he didn’t  _vibrate_  like that. Like all of him was, actually, now that Lance was looking for it. His bouncing knee, a twitch at the corner of his mouth, and the way his hands gripped his arms to keep themselves from wringing.

“It serves you fucking right if you are,” Lance said in response to what Keith  _hadn’t_ said–  _I’m_  addicted. I am. His voice lacked the heat it had had a moment ago, though, and after taking a deep breath of smoky air he sat down on his couch.

He didn’t look at Keith. From the lack of holes being drilled into his shoulder, he didn’t think Keith was looking at him either. Lance leaned his elbows on his knees and stared at his black TV screen, the foggy reflections inside it. There was a dull thud from beside him. He hadn’t eaten yet tonight. He’d just woken up.

Keith’s heartbeat sat between them for a moment like a bigoted grandparent, uncomfortable and better off ignored.

Lance blew out a breath and broke the silence.

“Symptoms?”

“I’m twitchy, I can’t sleep, I feel like my heart’s going to vibrate out of my chest and I scratched my neck raw without realizing it last week. I thought I was turning into one of  _you_ , but…”

“But that’s almost impossible to do by accident,” Lance finished for him. He was a terrible liar first thing in the evening, and even more so when he was angry. Keith would have known if he’d been fibbing about not knowing what he’d done to piss him off.

“Also,” Lance added after a moment, “I don’t appreciate that tone. ‘One of  _you_.’ Are you trying to start something or what, Kogane?”

There was a  _shff_  of hair and fabric as Keith shifted. Lance’s eyes flew to Keith, certain he was about to get punched or worse, but Keith was just shaking his head, jaw tight and knuckles white. His hair obscured his eyes from this angle.

“No, I’m– let’s not do this right now, okay? Just… not right now. This is serious.”

That it was. But also…

“It’s not really my problem,” he said. It was Keith’s turn to turn sharply to him, mouth already opening, and Lance waved a hand to try to fan away the words. “It  _isn’t_.  _You’re_  the one who cornered  _me_ , this is your own damn fault. In fact, you’re lucky to be  _alive_  right now, all things considered.”

“You weren’t supposed to get back  _up_ ,” Keith said, and Lance dug his fingers into the couch to keep from palming at his own chest.

“Yeah? Well maybe you should’ve aimed better then, stabby.”

“Maybe I  _should_  have.”

There was a moment of silence, broken only by the thud of Keith’s heart and the fragile sound of his breathing. Lance glared, stony-faced, and Keith sent the look right back at him. Neither spoke.

“Well, you know what’s going on now. Time to get your ass gone.”

Lance unclenched his fingers from the cushion beneath him, waved his hand dismissively. Keith, predictably, didn’t budge.

“I knew you were thoughtless, but this is low, even for you. You don’t feel even a  _little_  responsible for this?”

That stung. Lance wasn’t  _thoughtless_. He thought a lot, actually, about his friends and family and even random strangers. He was polite to just about everyone, friendly even. He always had a smile to give, and it was frankly fucking exhausting to always be  _on_  like that, always trying to be the shoulder to lean on and the comic relief and the shameless flirt that made ladies and men alike laugh their troubles away. He even thought quite a bit about Keith, and Keith knew full well that Lance was more than capable of being kind. He was just done with Keith’s bullshit, and that was a completely different thing.

So Lance folded his arms, mouth twisting and haughtiness coiling around his words.

“No. No I don’t. Not even a tiny bit. And I don’t know what you want me to do anyway. You’re such a glutton for suffering, go wait out the withdrawal in some vamp-proof vault somewhere like I know you have.”

Keith’s throat worked, adam’s apple bobbing, and Lance most definitely did not think of taking a bite out of it, not even a little bit.

“It’s done nothing but get  _worse_ ,” he said, and Lance uncrossed his arms in order to wave his hands through the air again. He did that a lot around Keith, he realized. More than around anyone else. He was always animated, but sometimes it felt like he was trying to swat Keith’s words out of the air rather than illustrate his own.

“It’s withdrawal. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better. Ride it out, tough guy.”

Lance didn’t exactly know if that was true, but he also didn’t exactly care. Then Keith gave him a Look that reminded him so intensely,  _viscerally_  of Before that for a split second he actually hoped that it was, for Keith’s sake.

“I–”

Keith’s voice cracked. He swallowed, and Lance didn’t watch it. Keith’s jaw was no longer tight with anger, but it  _was_  still tight. His lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line (not bloodless, never bloodless) and his eyebrows caught together like they were trapping a small terror between them. Lance didn’t speak, waited for Keith to gather enough shards of speech to finish.

“One of my marks got the drop on me today,” he said at last. The words lacked any kind of emotion. Lance could still feel the hurt from the other side of the couch. Would he ever be free of this familiarity?

Keith reached up to palm at the side of his neck, the same side Lance had sunk his teeth into almost a month ago. He didn’t think Keith noticed. His eyes were distant.

“She had me pinned to the wall, and… I mean, I had my knife, I could’ve taken her head off there and then. I did, I mean. But I almost  _dropped_  it. I almost let her…”

He trailed off then, as if that had been the shocking part of the story.

Lance remembered Keith sleeping with his knife strapped to his thigh beneath his pajama bottoms, trying and failing to imagine Keith’s fingers willingly relinquishing that worn handle.

“That’s not good,” was what he wound up saying. Keith matched him dumb for dumb, obvious for obvious.

“No. No it’s not.”

Keith’s knee was still bouncing. Up and down, up and down. Lance remembered the taste of his blood as it had been after he’d completed that frantic, desperate clutch for sustenance, as he pressed his tongue to the back of his teeth and tasted soot and the sweetest nectar that had ever touched his lips.

“Had you seriously never been bitten before?” he asked. “I mean, I know you’re good and all but your line of work has to get you into  _some_  close scrapes.”

Keith’s hand cupped his elbow loosely. He leaned pressure onto his palm.

“Yes and no? I mean, I’ve gotten grazed before, and one time one of yall managed to get teeth into my arm something  _bad_ , but never anything like…”

Lance nodded. Made sense.

“It’s your own fault,” he repeated, and this time Keith didn’t argue.

“It’s getting worse.”

Well, another rerun wouldn’t hurt.

“I don’t know what you want me to do about that. I can’t magically make it  _go away_. You can’t do anything but wait.”

Keith’s shoulders shifted as he pushed more weight into the pad of his own hand. His eyes slid slick away from Lance’s.

“There is  _one_  other thing.”

No.

 _No_.

“No,” Lance said, and his voice jumped an octave again. “ _No_ , what? I’m not gonna– are you  _serious_  with this shit? Do you not remember trying to  _kill_ me? And now you want me to– no! Fuck no!”

Keith’s gaze was steady. It was, steadily, being aimed at Lance’s knee, not his face.

“I have to get this under control.”

“I don’t care! That’s a  _stopgap_ , it’s not a long-term solution unless you plan on crawling back here every couple of weeks to get your fix, and  _that’s_  assuming I’d even  _do it_  at all, which I won’t!”

“I don’t have  _time_ ,” Keith began through gritted teeth. His nails were digging into his leather jacket again. “To  _wait this out_. I have things to do, and I can’t afford to be compromised or under self-imposed house arrest for  _months_.”

If he’d thought he couldn’t get any more indignant after opening the door to a doorbell-abusing Keith, Lance had been wrong. His gut churned, one part anger, one part misplaced shame, two parts queasy nerves and a final dose of curdled, expired concern.

“So go find some other vampire to chew on your neck then, screw your plans. I’m not helping. I am  _never_  helping you  _again_.”

Keith said something then, half-mumbled, and it got tangled enough in his heartbeat that Lance lost the words. The corner of his mouth twitched, and then so did his ears.

“Say what?” he asked.

“I said,” Keith repeated, voice rising steadily in volume. He still wouldn’t meet Lance’s eyes. “I might know where Katie’s brother is.”

And that, well.

Lance thought of Pidge. He thought of those wide amber eyes that gazed out from behind glasses too big for them, of nights she’d spent passed out on his floor when he’d still been too scared of himself to sleep. Hunk was his rock, his big guy, but Pidge was the small and firey kid who’d chosen him when by all accounts she could have lumped him in with the enemies he now so resembled. She’d stuck by his side when doing so meant losing a key to finding the Kerberos crew.

“ _If you’re lying_ ,” Lance began, but he didn’t have a chance to finish before Keith cut him off.

“I would have told her  _weeks_  ago if she didn’t try to  _hit_   _me_  every time she sees me now. She just about broke my nose one time, and somehow she’s blocked me on social media I don’t think I  _have_  yet.”

Pidge, Lance decided, needed to be treated to late-night Starbucks more often. What an absolute angel.

“I’ll do it,” he said. Thoughtlessly. And Keith finally met his eyes with a look like someone staring into the sun– confused, pained, filled with an intense desire to look away, and still somehow just a little bit in wonder.

“Really?” Keith asked numbly, like the word was novocaine.

Lance scoffed. “Don’t make me repeat myself. Jacket off, and you better send me every scrap of information you have before tonight’s over, you hear me?”

Keith could definitely hear him, though whether or not he processed anything other than the confirmation was another question entirely. He shucked off his jacket with painfully eager movements, and before Lance could even think to ask his t-shirt was joining it on the floor. Keith’s heart was skipping and skidding along, missing beats and tripping over itself in its rush. Lance had never had a meal quite so eager to be consumed.

He’d never thought Keith would be so desperate to press his life down Lance’s throat.

“How should we,” he started to ask, and maybe Before this would’ve been an awkward and fumbling affair full of accidental hand-touches and nervous chatter filling the air. But now Keith was jonesing and Lance was hungry and anything awkward was driven from them as Lance grabbed him by the waist and hauled him bodily into his lap.

Keith was shorter than him standing up, but sitting down they were close to the same height. Perched on Lance’s legs, he was just tall enough that when Lance leaned forward his face slotted perfectly into the crook of his neck. Lance breathed him in, wood smoke and molasses, and his fangs pressed through his gums.

Keith grabbed for his upper arms, fingers digging into Lance’s flesh. Lance hardly felt it but he returned the gesture anyway, palming Keith’s bony hips and holding him in place. He couldn’t escape if he wanted to, but judging from the way Keith was  _leaning into_  the mouth on his neck Lance felt pretty safe saying escaping was the furthest thing from his mind.

“Bite me.  _Please_ ,” he gasped, voice strangled with a lack of pressure at his throat. Lance didn’t even realize he was going to sink his teeth into Keith’s neck before blood was blooming in his mouth.

He couldn’t tell which one of them groaned first. Keith’s hands roamed, clawing at his back, his shoulders, maybe searching for something to ground himself and maybe just spasming as he finally got his high. He was hot and thick and sweet on Lance’s tongue, even with the taste no longer amplified by wild thirst (perhaps better now, actually, that he wasn’t mortally wounded). Still, Lance only allowed himself a mouthful before pulling back. Too much blood loss equalled a passed-out Keith on his couch, and Lance wanted him  _gone_  as soon as the high cleared his system.

Lance managed to get far enough away to get a breath of air before Keith’s hands were at the back of his head, tangling into his hair and shoving him back towards his throat.

“ _More_ ,” he croaked, “That’s not  _enough_. More, please, just–”

Lance bit him again, fangs puncturing fresh skin, and Keith’s plea turned into a wordless moan. He was panting like he couldn’t get enough air, which didn’t make sense considering Lance had hardly drunk anything at all yet. His hands still made little, helpless gestures at the base of Lance’s skull.

 _More, more, bite me again_.

He did. This one was low, scarcely above Keith’s collarbone, and he licked the punctures once before finding another patch of smooth skin to destroy. Keith’s skin was sticky against his lips, blood spilling over and welling anew with each beat of his heart. Lance thought he might be drunk on him, just maybe. He tongued lazy swaths of skin and took another bite.

Keith had stopped trying to talk. He made tiny wordless sounds, still struggling to do the impossible and press Lance closer. Lance couldn’t imagine what it must be like, to spend your life killing something that turned around and lit you up like this. Something that pumped your veins so full of freedom and relief it could make even the most stalwart individual walk willingly into the arms of their death.

Something wet dripped onto Lance’s cheek. He ignored it, cut a pair of holes into Keith’s shoulder.

It would’ve been easier to get his fill from one set of punctures, but Lance couldn’t deny how satisfying it was to drift from bite to bite, coaxing blood to the surface with messy slurps and chasing spills with his tongue. When his stomach was full of stolen warmth and the tacky-wet wounds were starting to clot he hummed in satisfaction.

He leaned back against the arm of the couch. Keith, for his part, had stopped grabbing at him. He’d stopped moving much at all, actually, eyes tight shut and mouth still sculpting silent words. Lance reached up to cup his cheek. He thumbed the overstimulated tears off of Keith’s face.

Then he casually shoved him off his lap.

Keith crumpled onto his couch, curling in on himself. His chest rose and fell irregularly, and his fingers twitched. Slowly, slowly, his breathing evened out. His hands fell still. Lance listened, half in his own world of contented and satiated haze, as Keith’s heartbeat slowed to a pace that wouldn’t be out of place if Keith had been sleeping.

Lance licked his lips.  _God_ , Keith tasted good.

“I’ll get a towel,” he said to no one in particular. Keith hummed in what  _could_  have been interpreted as agreement. Neither of them moved.

“You ever wonder,” Lance asked, tongue loosened by the heat curling in his gut.

Keith curled a bit further in on himself.

“Yeah,” he breathed, voice raw. “Yeah.”

Lance cleaned the blood from his neck with a warm washcloth as Keith shuddered and hummed his way through his high. More than once, his fingers danced out to graze various parts of Lance’s body. Shoulder. Thigh. Stomach. Like making contact was the only way he could confirm that Lance was really there.

“This isn’t good,” Lance said.

“No. No ‘s not.”

For the first time in a long time the corner of Keith’s mouth twitched up in a small, fragile smile.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this isn't too OOC, I love my boys when they're close and supportive but again, was specifically asked for angst. I also know there's waaaay too much langst in these here hills so I tried to avoid the lance pain that's been run into the ground by now, and I'm crossing my fingers I was successful.


End file.
